the dragon child
by TheDragonLover
Summary: "Draca realizes that she never really knew the Boogeyman at all." -Collection of pieces written for WriterVerse challenge on LJ. Snippets are loosely related; original character inside.
1. moral compass

**Title:** moral compass  
**Word Count:** 1145  
**Rating:** PG  
**Original/Fandom:** Fandom (Rise of the Guardians/The Guardians of Childhood)  
**Pairings (if any):** N/A  
**Warnings (Non-Con/Dub-Con etc):** N/A  
**Summary: **Draca realizes that she never really knew the Boogeyman at all.

* * *

The laughter in the cavern was dark and sinister, bouncing off of the walls in a way that made it impossible to pin down their source. Draca whipped around regardless, desperately looking for the being that had led her here using one of his shadows as a compass through the wilderness to his lair. Standing tall, she called out into the dark, "Why did you attack my great-niece?"

There was the laughter again—and then she saw a figure ahead of her, tall and thin with arms nonchalantly outstretched. "Don't dramatize what happened, child." His tone, which she had once considered playful and witty, now sounded bitter with unearthed malice. "I didn't harm a single hair on her head." He cocked his head. "Her brother can attest to that, can't he?"

"But you frightened her." Her nails dug into her palms until she realized they had transformed into reptilian claws, drawing fresh blood that sizzled on her knuckles with the dragon magic in her veins. She dispelled them and refocused her attention on someone she had called mentor, if only in her thoughts. "You hunted her down with your Nightmares and filled her dreams with fear."

He snorted, stepping forward as he waved away her accusations. "Don't pretend to be a paragon of ideals," he retorted, eyes glinting in the dark. "I can remember quite a few fears of your making—or are you forgetting about the monstrous hybrids you've conjured, just for curiosity's sake?" His smile was crooked. "It appears to me that you have forgotten just who I am."

She took a deep breath, gathering her convictions like the cloak draped across her shoulders. It was a blanket of memories that had once wrapped her in warmth—that now fueled the disbelief in her voice. "But you didn't _have_ to drown her in fear! She's past the point in her childhood where dreams should have power over her waking hours." She took her own step forward. "But you've—you've completely covered her in your nightmaresand!"

"Is it the sand that bothers you?" His strides were slow and smooth, reminding her of a panther waiting for the moment to pounce. "Don't pretend to uphold the ideals of those _imbeciles_. Your motives are much more selfish." As she drew back in astonishment, he pressed his advantage, "You've assisted me with frightening the children of earth—don't bother to deny your involvement. Yet, you falter when these things involve your kin. Is that truly fair, child?" Drawing closer, he quoted snidely, " "Hoist with one's own petard?" "

Draca's heart leapt into her throat, but she postponed her self-castigation to argue with this dark being. Perhaps she could reason with him—she still cherished the discoveries she had made in his presence, and she had thought he had appreciated having someone to bounce ideas off of. "Pitch, you—you can't just—"

But it appeared the Boogeyman had listened to all that he would; he made a cutting motion with his arm, hissing, "Enough." The darkness began to writhe, and she realized with an unfamiliar stab of fear that it was all alive: The floor, the ceiling, the walls—even the stalagmites and stalactites were coated with his shadows and sand. "When the Man in the Moon saw fit to banish me into obscurity, he underestimated my ability to hold a grudge." Crooked teeth flashed into a menacing smile. "I do believe I will return the favor."

Appalled by this side of him she had never seen, her voice cracked as she asked incredulously, "Starting with my family?"

"Hm." He paused, as if actually giving this much contemplation. "I suppose there is a protocol in this situation. I can't simply sweep your usefulness under a rug." Lifting his chin with a smirk, he proffered almost sincere praise. "I do enjoy some of your more creative ideas. There were some monsters that even ol' North would hesitate to combat. Would it be too much to assume you could continue supplying such beasts?"

She drew back, not too afraid to ask, "Supplying beasts for _what?_"

"Don't play the fool, it's quite unbecoming." He scoffed at her dark look. "Must I translate everything for you? I want your cooperation, child; it is preferable to having you against me." One thin eyebrow arched as he spoke her very thoughts: "You have learned much under my tutelage, haven't you? Wouldn't you like to continue mastering these powers gifted to you?"

Draca swallowed, a whisper of memory bringing back her old friend's advice—the friend that had given her these powers and this existence in the first place. He had told her not to be enslaved by the fears of society, to fly free of them and let magic take her where it will. But, was the reward worth sacrificing the peace of mind of her great-niece and great-nephew, and their father Erryn who had been the first to truly believe in her after all of these years? And what of the other children she had encountered across the globe? Were they merely a means to an end, being humans in a society that was teaching them to reject magic?

A soft sigh interrupted her thoughts as the Boogeyman rolled one wrist nonchalantly. "I must depart, I'm afraid. I'll give you time to consider my offer. It matters little to me, but I'm ever the gentleman." The sand that clung to his waist tightened and yanked him backwards, propelling him through the cave and towards an opening in the ceiling she hadn't noticed before.

She moved with a shout of his name to follow, but something jerked her tail as sand trickled around her neck. Attempting to wriggle out of its grip, she cried out when she felt it untie her cloak and slip it off of her shoulders. Reaching blindly for it, she heard the dark man chuckle—it was once again echoing about the cave in a disorienting manner.

"Can't have you running after me with the Guardians at your heels," he drawled. "You'll make an excellent diversion for now. I'll return your cloak once you've made your decision."

She scraped along the jagged floor as the sand dragged her back out the way she came, kicking and screaming the entire way. The only thoughts going through her mind were chasing after Pitch and claiming the only physical representation of her faded friend, and trying to stop him from whatever dark things he planned to do with her family. But she was drained after the mad dash to the cavern and the disturbing conversation with someone she had once looked up to, and it wasn't long before all of the fight in her had fled.

By the time the nightmaresand dumped her on the ground outside and the Sandman spotted her from his island in the sky, she was unconscious.

* * *

**Words:** Nouns: paragon, compass, sand, blanket, wilderness, reward, diversion, ceiling, island, north / Verbs: uphold, translate, sizzle, dramatize, cherish, untie, banish, falter, scrape, postpone


	2. could've been

**Title:** could've been  
**Word Count:** 1153  
**Rating:** G  
**Original/Fandom:** Fandom (Guardians of Childhood/Rise of the Guardians)  
**Pairings (if any):** N/A  
**Warnings (Non-Con/Dub-Con etc):** N/A  
**Summary:** Draca is trying to recover from a betrayal, and the Guardians that found her aren't sure how to comfort her. Sequel to entry for #30b: Nouns and Verbs.

* * *

The Guardians exchanged worried glances as the normally energetic girl sat on the edge of the platform, gazing down at the world below the airship. With knees up and arms wrapped around her legs, Draca looked like she was trying to appear as small as possible. The only movement came from the wind tousling her hair, and the gentle shaking of her shoulders.

"Someone should go talk to her," Toothiana murmured, glancing at the guys around her. But the uneasy looks on their faces showed their reluctance, so she nudged Bunnymund's arm and hissed, "Go on, cheer her up!"

The Pooka drew back, looking mildly horrified. "Isn't cheer the new kid's shtick? Make _him_ do it!"

Wanting to forestall a fight, Jack held up his hands in surrender. "All right, I'm going, I'm going!" He wasn't able to resist a parting shot before he jogged towards the edge. "I can do the job of _two_ Guardians." Ignoring the indignant spluttering behind him, the winter spirit stopped just beside the girl, careful not to step on her tail. He was curious about how she'd gotten it, but he figured this wasn't the time to ask those questions.

Crouching down to balance on the balls of his feet, he quietly joked, "Aren't you cold over here at the edge? The wind's freezing this far up." The humor in him pointing this out wasn't lost on him, but Draca didn't even crack a grin.

Her shoulders barely lifted in a shrug as she kept her gaze on the ground. He wasn't sure what she was searching for, as the houses and streets were barely visible from this height. They looked like the dots and lines on a map.

Seeing that jaded look in her eyes disturbed him, which is what caused him to shrug out of his hoodie and drape it over her. He inched away to lessen the icier effects of his presence and let the silence stand for a little while. She didn't thank him, but her face was now curiously blank. He wondered if she hadn't wanted him to know how she felt.

It wasn't long before he got tired of waiting and sought to break the silence. "What happened to your cape—cloak—whatever you call it?"

This got a reaction out of her: A hitch in her breathing, eyes growing misty, and the whitening of her knuckles. He didn't have to wonder about it too long, although there was a pause between his question and her answer. "He—" She stopped to swallow a lump in her throat. "It was the Boogeyman. He took it."

"Pitch?" Jack noticed that the conversation behind him ceased at his exclamation, so he lowered his voice as he continued, "What did he want with that? It clashes horribly with his funeral style."

Her knuckles grew paler. "He… doesn't want me following him." She hesitated, and then unexpectedly switched tracks. "That was a gift from an old friend. And I just… let him take it." The tears were welling up in her eyes, but she dried them before they fell.

"I doubt that," the Guardian of Fun protested, trying to pull her out of her depression. "Unless you handed it to him and said "Merry Christmas," I imagine you fought tooth and nail to get it back."

"I was so stupid!" Her unexpected outburst shocked him, as did the sudden swinging of her arms. Her legs slid to dangle over the edge as she ranted haltingly, "I thought that maybe he was my friend—that maybe—those times that he praised my ideas—didn't think he was keeping secrets from me—I thought, maybe he wasn't so bad after all! But he was just—" She choked. "Just using me to scare my own family. To scare everyone_._" Energy seemingly spent, she dropped her head into her hands with a sniffle. "And I thought we were just having fun_._"

He didn't know the full story behind all of this, but it sounded like the Boogeyman had tricked her into furthering his sinister plot—and that was something Jack could sympathize with, after being the key component in Pitch's last major scheme.

Shifting his staff to rest on his other shoulder, the winter spirit gave a soft sigh. "He's tried to manipulate me before," he admitted. "I singlehandedly allowed him to ruin Easter for kids around the world." It was a victory when this caused Draca to glance over at him, obviously intrigued by this confession. "The kangaroo didn't take kindly to that." Her faint smile was encouraging.

His mind drifted back to a conversation that occupied every quiet moment he let it. _"What goes together better than cold and dark?"_ Although he wasn't proud of it, for the briefest of moments he had pictured the existence Pitch had painted with his words, where everyone believed in him… and he had considered it. It was a small part of him that wondered if he could pull it off, if he could put aside the mantle of Guardian to work alongside the Boogeyman in making the world a miserable place. Would he have been able to betray everything that the Man in the Moon, who hadn't said a peep after giving him the name "Jack Frost," had recruited the Guardians to protect?

This reminded him of something else that had stuck in his head: The expression Pitch had worn after his partnership was refused. It hadn't lasted long, but it spoke of the loneliness he had tempted Jack with the cure for, hinting that maybe beneath those false lures was a nugget of truth that even the Boogeyman didn't want to believe was true.

That he was lonely. And he was tired of being alone.

With this in mind, Jack sought to ease the guilt off of the girl's shoulders, which seemed to sag under the weight of what she felt was her responsibility. Taking care with his words, he spoke with a tone more somber than usual. "I'm not going to say that I can read him like an open book, but… maybe he _was_ having fun." He wasn't insulted by her doubtful look. "Look, the guy gets his kicks out of making kids wet their beds. He can appreciate anything that gives them a good scare."

She made a face. "So, what—you're saying he _was_ my friend?"

"Pitch doesn't know how to make friends," he warned, remembering his broken staff and the nearly frozen Baby Tooth very clearly. "He failed that test with a capital "F." But if he wasn't such an evil guy determined to ruin everybody's childhood—" He noticed the pained look on her face and hurriedly went on, "Maybe you _could've_ been friends?"

"Thanks." But even with her sarcastic tone, she looked fairly thoughtful, and that was a vast improvement to her original state of mind. He could deal with thoughtful.

* * *

**Prompt:** Secrets


End file.
